MURDER BY DEATH(proof that Dave Grusin should really stick to orchestral scores)
THE CABLE GUY(John Ottman's score IS Elfmanesque, but it works on its own merit)
almost anything by John Morris

Any other thoughts?

Mulholland Falls (Dave Grusin) Definetly one of his best scores of the 90's. This score is classic ode to Goldsmith's Chinatown, only a bit more up tempo.

The Linguini Incident (Thomas Newman) This score is quirkiest score Newman has done in really long time and his last of pure comedy scores he's written. It's a mixture of jazz and his usual inventive quirks. It's too bad that most of it got dumped in the film.

Fire In The Sky (Mark Isham) The film is underrated as is Isham's unique score. A mixture of big orchestra and electronics, Isham created a rather pleasant and sometimes downright frightening experience watching this film. The lengthy 12 piece Evil Spirits from the Sky is perfect example of this.

Well, part of that has to be that some of these guys have a small body of work or their scores are for older films all but forgotten. If John Corigliano hadn’t been nominated for Red Violin, I am sure we wouldn’t be talking about him. He has only scored 3 films. Or maybe there is no score available for their work.

Here are some of my forgotten composers/scores

Almost anything by Nino Rota.

His marvelous score for Death on the Nile is just beautiful and majestic. I heartily recommend it.
Of course, he is better known for The Godfather. But Death on the Nile is much better.

Leith Stevens – War of the Worlds and When worlds collide. Both excellent.

Simon Boswell – For his very creepy Lord of Illusions

I`m sure there are more, can`t think of them now

(I think there has been an release on vinyl many, many, many years ago. Let's raise our voices in order to get a release on CD... :-))

Does anybody know "THE JUPITER MENACE"? I have that record since the early eighties, but so far nobody really knew that score. It was composed by some guy called Larry Fast (doesn't seem to be his real name, though). It is a purely electronic score for a film I never had the chance of seeing... Do you know more about it????

I'm not even going on anymore. The list is too long. I'll just name a composer that doesn't get mentioned enough:

Patrick Doyle

I haven't heard many scores by Terry Plumeri, but all of them are excellent. I hope he manages to follow the Christopher Young route and crawl out of D-movie obscurity. (And speaking of neglected Young scores: just pick up Intrada's "Cinema Septet," this is all you'll ever hear of some of this stuff, including a piece he did for a student film at UCLA or USC, forget which.)

Basil Poledouris' NO MAN'S LAND was done at the height of Hollywood's affair with the synthesizer, and remains one of the better examples of that kind of score from that period.

NP: "Peter and the Wolf" (Prokofiev) but I want to hang it up in ten minutes, it's close to dawn ... although one nice thing about Daylight Savings Time, it's not already getting light outside, despite the hour ... on the other hand it's thrown me off my sleep schedule even more severely than I already was. What a world, what a world.

Cinema Septet?,Well recomended!!!

My mistake, it's Delerue odcourse. Oops.

- "Miller's Crossing" (Carter Burwell)
a very refreshing score

- "The Usual Suspects" (John Ottman)
very mysterious

Petulia, John Barry
Sodom and Gomorrah, Rozsa
Sommersby, Danny Elfman
A Little Princess, Doyle
The Conquerors, Victor Young (a wretched film)

can we please have a release of Mystery Alaska and Fear, both by Carter Burwell?

I was rummaging through my collection and came across Bruce Broughton's marvelous Young Sherlock Holmes score. I like this much more than Silverado from the same time period.

I'll also mention Mike Moran's work on TIME BANDITS (Trevor Jones also contributed a cue, the pipe-music dance when the disguised dwarves rob King Agamemnon.)

I LOVE YOU TO DEATH(James Horner)
SGT. BILKO(Alan Silvestri)

If there's one thing I love in a film score, it's steel drums.

I don't know if these count as "neglected," since FSM issued a double CD of them, but Gerald Fried's horror scores are phenomenal, and anyone who likes his STAR TREK work would certainly like these. I'm especially impressed by how DIFFERENT each one is ... except for the kind of repeats ANY composer falls into, you wouldn't necessarily mistake one from one film for another from another.

I kind of liked John DuPrez's main title for ONCE BITTEN, bought the LP (very cheap) just to hear it again.

Charles Bernstein has written some wonderful stuff, including the 1982 (?) TV miniseries SADAT. Strange that his legacy seems likely to be one of his lesser works, the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET ... he did a much more interesting job on the later horror picture APRIL FOOL'S DAY (a Varese LP release).

Terry Plumeri's done great, great work, and yet he's been unable to rise above the D-movie (or even Z-movie) ghetto. That's a guy who really needs a break. (A mututal friend -- I don't know Plumeri -- has told me that Plumeri keeps thinking about getting out of the business. It would be a real loss, the guy has some real compositional ability, and with any luck is only going to get better.)

Richard Stone's PUMPKINHEAD has been mentioned on the Scary threads, but deserves another nod.

I think Ry Cooder is really undervalued, and that his SOUTHERN COMFORT is splendid. As well, PARIS, TEXAS is one of my favorite scores of the 1980s.

My favorite George Fenton is certainly MEMPHIS BELLE, a big corny movie with exactly the huge, romantic "Danny Boy"-based score that the picture wanted. File the movie under "guilty pleasures," but the Fenton score is the real thing.